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Greatest hits: Sarah Palin on Fox News

Tim Graham, the Media Research Center’s director of media analysis, said Morris getting canned by Fox just means the so-called worst pundit of 2012 will fall off the radar for many viewers in the same way he has for political insiders over the years.

“I think in his case, him leaving Fox hurts his reputation, hurts his visibility,” Graham said. “His whole appeal to people was that he had been a pollster for Bill Clinton. The whole idea of, ‘I know Bill Clinton,’ was a hot commodity in ’98, but it’s 2013. I think he’s in danger of being yesterday’s news.”

If Morris says he hasn’t missed Fox News, it seems the feeling is mutual. Since leaving, he’s been mentioned on the network only four times, according to the television monitoring service TVEyes — and most substantially as the punch line of a joke.

“All right, Bill,” Dennis Miller said after Bill O’Reilly threw to him for a segment on the Feb. 20 edition of “The O’Reilly Factor.” “Dick Morris with a leaf blower outside. Dubs is barking, I can hardly hear ya.”

Nonetheless, Morris isn’t spending much time gardening in his life after Fox — he’s got his radio show, a column in The Hill and his international consulting work to focus on. “I have never been a darling of the media and don’t expect to become one now,” Morris said.

Fox News didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Sarah Palin

With a passionate fan base and a powerful social media presence that can launch hundreds of thousands of clicks, Palin’s life after Fox has been just as influential — and divisive — as during her tenure on the network, observers say.

She joined Fox News as a paid contributor in 2010, after she had resigned as Alaska governor. This January, Fox News confirmed the three-year run with the former Republican vice presidential nominee was over.

Even without a formal arrangement, Palin still gets her name out there often on Fox News, with 135 mentions in the past 90 days on the network, according to TVEyes. And Fox News has hardly blacklisted her as a news subject — Palin’s comments on social media and her speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the recent National Rifle Association convention in Texas have been clipped and discussed on the network.

“She really took to Facebook and Twitter, and for whatever anyone may think of her or say about her, that’s given her a certain foundation for continuing to voice her opinions,” said Liz Mair, a Republican communications strategist who served as online communications director at the Republican National Committee in 2008.

“I think her objective was to make traditional media filters fairly irrelevant for her purposes, and I think she’s actually succeeded pretty well in doing that,” Mair added. “In many regards, she has succeeded in building those tools and getting away from traditional media dominance in a way that is highly enviable to those on both sides of the aisle.”